The citizenry is about to get at least a partial break from the religious regime of the U.S. Government. John Ashcroft is resigning as Attorney General. I, for one, cannot wait to see who takes his place and I hope that his replacement's politics and personal beliefs are just a tad more toward the center. Of course, with a Republican White House and Congress, we'll certainly get a replacement that leans to the right. Hopefully, however, they can avoid someone who leans so much that they occasionally tip over. Let's face it folks, I'm surprised John Ashcroft can walk a straight line without wearing weights in his left shoe.
In his letter of resignation, Attorney General Ashcroft states: "Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration". Many in the country might agree with this statement. However, we should not forget that Mr. Ashcroft served during trying times, and he and his office have done a bang up job of helping to keep this country safe. I may not agree with some of his methods or opinions, but results are something he should be appreciated for. John, we'll miss having you as a punching bag. It's time to find a new reason for disliking the Bush administration.

Free Chess Position Trainer software is available at this link. I haven't tried it yet, but will when I get home tonight. It's very difficult to find any free chess software beyond just analysis and chess playing. This software may actually help you study opening moves, and develop pattern recognition. Without playing hundreds of games, you may never be able to do this yourself. The developer made the software for himself and offers it for free, asking for donations if you like it.

Finally Have More Time To Write -
Well, things are calming down, both at work and at home, and I've got some time to write. This past weekend, I spent trying to get NDISWRAPPER to load up at boot time. I'm not having a whole lot of luck getting it to run automatically. It seems to me that the wireless signal can take up to 7 minutes to find the access point, and there are still problems with the code that can cause kernel crashes and lockups if you try to use the interface before it's locked on to a signal. Turning off SSID broadcasts helped a bit, but there are still some problems that prevent the interface from coming up at boot time. Once the machine boots, I can execute the setup script and have the interface come right up, but then I have to restart Samba and Apache so they can bind to the IP address that is then available. Considering I'm trying to setup a closet machine, I don't want to have to manually bring it up (no monitor on the machine is the ultimate goal..).
I'm almost to the point where I want to just wire the closet with Ethernet, but I'll play with it some more. At least I got ndiswrapper working at all. It looks to me by the Usenet posts I'm reading that some people can't even get that far.

That's it! Finished, fini! 120 credit hours are now complete, and I have earned my degree. I finished my last class final today, and I am done. My time is now my own, and I can spend it doing the things that I enjoy without having to worry about scheduling in school assignments. In December I will receive my B.S. in Computer Science/Programming. Talk to you later. Just had to get that out. It feels good to be done!

I've been having a problem with Windows' Remote Desktops MMC Snap-In - but I think I've solved it. The problem was that the mouse would sometimes dissapear in one but not all of the Remote Desktop sessions I was using. There were a few posts on the Usenet newsgroups about this, but I didn't find a solution, but rather a hint toward one. It turns out that the solution is that the particular Remote Desktop session thinks that the CTRL key is being held down. To fix it, merely hold and release CTRL and the mouse will re-appear.

Added my Chess games in a link to the left. It links to an index of games that I've put through the Open Source chess engine called Crafty (written by Bob Hyatt). Also, you know those penguins in the last post? Well, seems they ARE plotting something! I saw a movie preview in the theater the other day where they plot and execute a zoo escape. Looks like a ball. Keep an eye out for it in theaters this summer.

Because, obviously, SOMEONE has way too much time on their hands, they've created ThePenguinConspiracy.com - Penguins are taking over. Not only do I wish I had the time to waste to do something like this, but I wish I had the motivation and drive as well. Then I'd actually spend it doing something useful.

Taking my last class for my degree. Of course, rather than pick something simple, I chose yet another course with tons of reading and a term paper. Impact of Sexuality on Behaviour, or something close to that. It's a Sociology major course. At least it's interesting reading ;)

Going to add a section to the web site: Chess Games I've played (w/annotations by Crafty). It's more for my own records than anything else. I'm playing again and I keep making stupid errors. Ah, the impatience of youth, right? The first game can be seen here. I'll make a link for the sidebar and an index for them, maybe with my own commentary thrown in as I have time.

Meanwhile, still busy as a beaver, but almost done!! (smile, keep the chin up - talk at you later)

God, it's been a long time since I've had time to write. Besides being swamped at work with a bunch of new projects (both a good thing and a bad thing, I guess), working through these two classes at school, and trying to handle my re-found addiction to Everquest, well...what can I say?
Just stopping to blab for a moment and don't have time for a real update. I have stuff to do.

Dear Blog - It has been a month since my last writing:
Wow, it's been a busy month. If it wasn't one thing, it was another this month. Lots and lots of homework for 2 of my last 5 classes. The Psychology course ended up being a whole BOATload of reading and had a term paper as well. At work, they sent me on travel to Texas for 8 days and at home my son is just getting out for summer vacation.
I can't wait until I'm done with this degree. I may not go right back for the Master's program, and instead concentrate on other things in my life for a little while.
One of those things might be considering moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas. Real Estate is depressed there at the moment, and it's just the opposite here in the Washington, DC area. It might be just the right time to buy something down there. I'm trying to work it through the office to find an assignment down there, but I'm not going to marry myself to my company. If I can find something on my own that will make sense, I will go for it.
The weather down there is great, too. We came back to Virginia, and the moment we stepped off the plane, it was like a wall of humidity stopped us in our tracks. The temperature was lower, but it felt a whole hell of a lot hotter.
Well, that's it for the moment...ta ta